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After Credentials

paulgraham.com

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Re: After Credentials

#151

Post by shimon »

hs wrote: post #130
mhartl wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to this argument, but the "long term" could easily be quite long on the timescale of a startup's solvency. FogBugz, for example, might well not have survived without the initial user base provided by the readers of Joel on Software. Having that promotion channel could easily have meant a factor of ten in the initial customer base compared to a "normal" startup. And that factor of ten represents more t…

i'm having difficulty imagining a bug tracking? software having viral growth ... so i guess the 'interest rate' is steadily low; therefore, initial capital is important

Bug tracking software, like other tools for programmers, often travels as a virus with team members. You hire some guy, he says "why are you using this horrible crap we used fogbugz at my last job and it wuz not teh suck", and so you try it.

Maybe we can call this resume-viral: products that are passed around by virtue of become recognizable bullet items on resumes.

Re: After Credentials

#152

Post by kingkongrevenge »

aswanson wrote: post #150
kingkongrevenge wrote: post #101

Credentialism and Mandaranism are artifacts of state dominated societies. It's really that simple. Free market economies feature so much creative destruction that power has little chance of persisting across generations. Only in a system lacking Darwinian market selection mechanisms do credentials become so critical. Credentialism emerged in China because the Chinese state was always much more powerful than the Europ…

Or finance-Wall Street. Maybe not, as the vast idiocy taking place there has been exposed recently. But memories are short.

Wall Street institutions are wings of the government. They live and die by the Fed and regulation. Universities also live and die by government support.

Re: After Credentials

#153

Post by gaius »

danw wrote: post #133
pmjordan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly because the UK is obsessed with league tables for universities, secondary schools and even primary schools. The University of York send me an annual survey to find out what I'm up to - I'm pretty sure they gather this data on all (willing) alumni, and where the data shows them in a good light they certainly make no secret of it at open days, etc.

Same for the UK university I attended. The survey is badly design, pretty much designed with the assumption that a graduate would be working for a big company. There's no way of reporting freelancer/self employed for example.

Yes most universities believe graduate -> graduate training programme, percentage thereof is measure of institutional success. Maybe that was true the last time the admissions officers were in the job market, but it hasn't been for 20-30 years.

Re: After Credentials

#154

Post by galactus »

hmmm.. I remember a recent article in The Economist about how social mobility in the US is decreasing, which seems to contradict the idea there is a shift towards a more merit-based society.

(btw, the same article also showed with hard data that contrary to popular belief social mobility was higher in europe than in the US, despite the idea that european countries are more "credentials based" than the US.)

Re: After Credentials

#155

Post by keithrbennett »

Paul -

Very interesting article. I agree with you -- I was pursuing a degree in accounting in the 80's, and started programming in 1981 when my department bought a microcomputer with 16K RAM. I got hooked on software development and made it my career. I finished the accounting degree not because it had any value to my work, but because of the value perceived by employers in having a (any, even in a nonrelated field) degree.

I'm curious what you think about precisely targeted certifications, though. Many are not sufficiently expensive to be available only to the rich, and few require years of unpaid study to achieve. They do demonstrate an objective level of expertise. There are certainly many other factors to consider while evaluating a team member, but, all other things equal, and assuming the content is well chosen, do you think certifications have any value? (My position is that they do have some value, but only when tempered with consideration of other factors, and the realization that the lack of a certification does not necessarily mean less competence.)

- Keith Bennett http://www.bbsinc.biz

Re: After Credentials

#156

Post by huherto »

retyred wrote: post #21
jbert wrote: post #9

If large organisations are less efficient: - why do they survive? - if they survive despite all, why do we permit them? If the market was regulated to set a cap on the size of a single company's workforce (or some other metric, perhaps market capitalisation), we'd also avoid the 'too big to fail' problem we have at the moment. Not to mention quasi-monopolistic practices like large chains killing off small local compe…

this entire "lots of small firms are the future" meme is probably just wrong. paul graham knows a lot about websites but very little about the rest of the economy. show me the ten person company that can produce the equipment to generate and transmit electricity. or food production. where are all the ma and pa grocery stores? and banking...we have fewer banks now than ever and the number is still dropping. and PCs...…

Supporting your idea check the "22 immutable laws of marketing" item #4 "In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race"

Re: After Credentials

#157

Post by huherto »

JimCooper wrote: post #146

And how are you supposed to measure performance? Many jobs are just not susceptible to doing that. It is well known in the software industry that attempts to measure programming performance result in programmers skewing their efforts in order to make the metrics look better. Teachers in the UK are measured on students' grades, so for some totally unrelated reason , students grades have gotten better every year for th…

You bring up an interesting point. Anyone has any idea of how to do it(Or how not to do it)? I've been developing for a long time and I do not have any good ideas.

Re: After Credentials

#158

Post by ehabkost »

Tangurena wrote: post #149
kingkongrevenge wrote: post #101

Credentialism and Mandaranism are artifacts of state dominated societies. It's really that simple. Free market economies feature so much creative destruction that power has little chance of persisting across generations. Only in a system lacking Darwinian market selection mechanisms do credentials become so critical. Credentialism emerged in China because the Chinese state was always much more powerful than the Europ…

Inheritance taxes eliminate the persistance across generations of power and wealth. However, since the bush administration chose to repeal estate taxes, they intended to return the US to the sort of nation with a hereditary aristocracy. In IT, we saw the problems with "credentialism" in the problems with "boot camps" and the "paper engineers" who came out with CNE/MCSE credentials who also were basically useless.

The whole article is about a common way to persist power and wealth through generations, a method that can't be eliminated by inheritance taxes. And you believe inheritance taxes would eliminate the persistence? Did you read the article? 8)

Re: After Credentials

#159

Post by anamax »

Tangurena wrote: post #149
kingkongrevenge wrote: post #101

Credentialism and Mandaranism are artifacts of state dominated societies. It's really that simple. Free market economies feature so much creative destruction that power has little chance of persisting across generations. Only in a system lacking Darwinian market selection mechanisms do credentials become so critical. Credentialism emerged in China because the Chinese state was always much more powerful than the Europ…

Inheritance taxes eliminate the persistance across generations of power and wealth. However, since the bush administration chose to repeal estate taxes, they intended to return the US to the sort of nation with a hereditary aristocracy. In IT, we saw the problems with "credentialism" in the problems with "boot camps" and the "paper engineers" who came out with CNE/MCSE credentials who also were basically useless.

> Inheritance taxes eliminate the persistance across generations of power and wealth.

No they don't. The persistence of the Kennedy s and Rockefellers demonstrate otherwise.

US inheritance taxes just hit family biz, and destroy them because the tax bill can only be satisfied by selling the biz.

The wealth of the truly rich (Gates et al) is not subject to inheritance tax. It is, however, passed on. (What - you thought that the Gates foundation was to do good?)

Re: After Credentials

#160

Post by anamax »

rsheridan6 wrote: post #29

"History suggests that, all other things being equal, a society prospers in proportion to its ability to prevent parents from influencing their children's success directly." Can we assume that pg is in favor of restoring the estate tax?

> Can we assume that pg is in favor of restoring the estate tax?

Can we see some evidence that the estate tax in the US ever had the characteristics cited by its proponents?

Consider, for example, the possibility that Caroline Kennedy will be appointed to the Senate by the NY Governor who just happens to come from a line of NY politicians. This isn't an isolated case - a huge fraction of current US senators are related to past senators and governors. (Biden's successor, one of his advisors, is seat-warming until his son is ready to run.) The House of Representatives isn't much different. The same thing happens at the state level - IL is mainstream in this.

The estate tax also doesn't hit the rich. The wealth of Gates et al will not be subject to the estate tax. It will, however, work to the benefit of their kids. (The Fords, Rockefellers, and GM heirs worked the same game.)

The only folks who pay estate tax are medium size family-owned biz. Many of them have to sell to pay the tax bill.

Interestingly enough, Buffet makes a lot of money buying such biz. He also makes a lot of money selling insurance to their founders to pay estate taxes.

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